Latest Reads: The Deep Alma Katsu.

This is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the passengers of the ship from the moment they set sail: mysterious disappearances, sudden deaths. Now suspended in an eerie, unsettling twilight zone during the four days of the liner’s illustrious maiden voyage, a number of the passengers – including millionaires Madeleine Astor andBenjamin Guggenheim, the maid Annie Hebbley and Mark Fletcher – are convinced that something sinister is going on . . . And then, as the world knows, disaster strikes.

Years later and the world is at war. And a survivor of that fateful night, Annie, is working as a nurse on the sixth voyage of the Titanic’s sister ship, the Britannic, now refitted as a hospital ship. Plagued by the demons of her doomed first and near fatal journey across the Atlantic, Annie comes across an unconscious soldier she recognises while doing her rounds. It is the young man Mark. And she is convinced that he did not – could not – have survived the sinking of the Titanic . . .

I’m a sucker for stories set around Titanic and this one was a creepy good tale, seamlessly blending fact and fiction, atmospheric and often very disturbing.

The research is impeccable, Alma Katsu giving you a real feel for both of these doomed ships, into that she throws an eclectic mix of characters both real and imagined. Throw in some ghostly goings on, huge insight into the trauma of war and disaster, plus an eerie obsessive central theme and you have a real winner.

The writing is superb, involving and genuinely absorbing the reader into the thrills and perils of ocean travel of the time where something unnatural lurks there in The Deep…